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Mental illness is a function of consciousness, and consciousness is something we see through a glass darkly. We simply are not prepared to understand it with the same certainty that we are prepared to understand, say, liver disease.

My earliest Zen teachers were failure and my father, in that order. The first thing I failed at was being physically big. This wasn’t my fault, of course, but kids always feel directly responsible for how they look. And how I looked was small.

I’m convinced the most accurate way to gauge your survival odds when you have cancer is not by the size, type, or grade of the tumor but by the size and splendor of the tropical-fish tank in your doctor’s waiting room. If it’s over thirty gallons and stocked with anything neon, you’d better start wondering why they want you so calm.

He was. She was. They met and together they: drank martinis, consummated their love on a couch he’d purchased at a secondhand store, bought a bungalow, wed at the courthouse with their parents’ blessing, . . .

I had been coming to the Nite Owl almost every day, because it was the only place I could get my research done. It was nice of my sister to put me up in her apartment and everything, but living with her was making it difficult to continue looking for the Pattern, because her television didn’t work. I’d tried the electronics store, but they’d gotten wise to me real quick. The only place I could watch free cable TV for as long as I wanted was that diner where pretty much no one ever came.

Hillman: I would rather define self as the interiorization of community. And if you make that little move, then you’re going to feel very different about things. If the self were defined as the interiorization of community, then the boundaries between me and another would be much less sure.

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In each issue of The Sun you’ll find some of the most radically intimate and socially conscious writing being published today. In an age of media conglomerates, we’re something of an oddity: an ad-free, independent, reader-supported magazine.